The Equalities Act 2010

The Equalities Act 2010 makes illegal to discriminate against a person with a disability! However you must prove that you have a disability, The Equalities Act 2010 (a) The Act defines a disabled person as a person with a disability. A person has a disability for the purposes of the Act if he or she has a physical or mental impairment and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

To find out what is in, what maybe in or out and what is definitely out please download Equality Act 2010 Guidance on matters to be taken into account in determining questions relating to the definition of disability please download The Equalities Act 2010 (727kb pdf).

Discrimination with work

Attending a job interview an employer is not permitted to ask about your disability and what effects it may have if you are employed. If you require additional absence for medical appointments and have not informed the employer then this is called non-disclosure and you can be dismissed. Reasonable adjustment made by employer, it is your responsibility to tell the employer of any reasonable adjustment you expect them to make to accommodate your needs, some expenses can be met. Associative discrimination is also covered as an employer must make reasonable adjustment if the person employed has a partner or child who is disabled.

An employer who uses the two tick’s symbol (The two ticks scheme is separate from the Equalities Act 2010 ) and declare themselves as positive about disability, you’ll be guaranteed an interview if you meet the basic conditions for the job. If this does not happen you should report it to the Disability Employment adviser at the local Jobcentre Plus office.

An employer is not legally required to meet the commitments of the ‘two ticks’ scheme. However, there may be a legal claim under the Equality Act if an employer treats some disabled people more favourably than others. If the employer operates the guaranteed interview scheme for a particular post, but refuses to give an interview to a particular disabled person, this may be unlawful as direct discrimination.

Access to services

It is unlawful for service providers to treat you less favourably because of your disability, and they must make ‘reasonable adjustments’ for you, such as giving you extra help or changing the way they provide their services Service providers must consider making changes to physical features of their premises so that there are no physical barriers which prevent you from using their services, or make it unreasonably difficult for you to do so.

It doesn’t matter whether or not you pay for the service; it’s providing the service that matters. Services include going to a restaurant, shopping for clothes or food, using the local library, going to church or visiting your solicitor or doctor. A service doesn’t have to be impossible to use before a service provider has to make changes. They also have to make changes when it’s unreasonably difficult. They should think about whether any inconvenience, effort, discomfort or loss of dignity you experience in using the service would be considered unreasonable by other people, if they had to endure similar difficulties. This includes requesting ramps for wheelchair access.

In most circumstances, service providers must make reasonable adjustments to remove any barriers – physical or otherwise – that could make it difficult or impossible for disabled customers to use their services.

Service providers do not have to make adjustments to make their services more accessible to disabled people if this will lead to a breach of any other legal obligations that apply to them. However, these will be exceptional circumstances that apply only where the other legal obligations are very specific, and leave the service provider no choice but to act in a certain way.

Discrimination on the World Wide Web

Examples of website design issues that are affected by this law abound. For instance, many visually impaired visitors use speech synthesizer software to read the text in the HTML code of web pages and translate it into audible speech. However, many website's include images that contain text as part of the pre-rendered picture file. These may be unreadable by the software. If the text is not embedded in the image properties (using an alt tag) or alternatively available in text somewhere on the website, this could render the content inaccessible visually impaired users could therefore be discriminated against for the purpose of The Equalities Act 2010.

The laws that cover this will allow individuals or groups to take civil action against the web site owner, this is called passive law, you may be liable for costs even if you win.

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